Web 2.0 is a technology shift that provides a user level interaction that was not available before in the web environment. However, Web 2.0 was introduced in 2004 as a second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on how information is shared among people. The word 2.0 comes from the software industry, which describe the transition from static HTML pages to dynamic webpages organized based on serving the web application users. Web become much more dynamic and interactive e.g. online communities. However, it is even easier to share information on the web. Popular websites that offer free services include Wikipedia, Google, and Facebook etc.
There are many definitions of Web 2.0. Wikipedia - as a prominent example for Web 2.0 - says:
Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.
While this two sentences are properly outlines the primary concepts and we know that the Web is growing rapidly, and at such rate, websites continue to grow and more features are added, we need to see an other definition originating from Tim O'Reilly from 2005:
Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform:
delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it
consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others
creating network effects through an "architecture of participation,"
and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.
From these two definitions we could derive the basic concepts arrived with the Web 2.0 expression:
Concept of Web 2.0
There are three main parts:
Rich Internet application
(RIA) — defines the experience brought from desktop to browser whether it is from a graphical point of view or usability point of view. Some buzzwords related to RIA are Ajax, Flash, Java FX (and the retired Silverlight as well). However, GWT, Vaadin and ExtJS are also related buzzes.
Web-oriented architecture
(WOA) — is a key piece in Web 2.0, which defines how Web 2.0 applications expose their functionality so that other applications can leverage and integrate the functionality providing a set of much richer applications. Examples are feeds, RSS, Web Services, mash-ups. (discussed detailed in the next chapter)
Social Web
defines how Web 2.0 tends to interact much more with the end user and make the end-user an integral part. In other words, let your users create your data, filter the data and create their own apps using your data.
As such, Web 2.0 draws together the capabilities of client- and server-side software, content syndication and the use of network protocols. Web browsers may use extensions to handle the content and the user interactions. Web 2.0 sites provide users with information storage, creation, and dissemination capabilities that were not possible in the environment now known as "Web 1.0".
A Rich Internet Application (RIA) is a Web application that is designed to deliver some key features and functions normally associated with desktop applications, which will help the user in accessing them. RIAs generally split the processing across the Internet/network divide by locating the user interface and related activity and capability on the client side. However, RIAs usually run inside a Web browser and normally do not require software installation on the client side to work. An RIA allows the client system to handle local activities, reformatting, calculations etc.
Characteristic of rich Internet application (RIA):
Performance impact: In today’s modern days depending on the applications and network characteristics, RIA is know often perform better that traditional apps. However most application that avoid round trip to the server by taking data and processing it locally on the client are likely to be faster to see. In order words offloading such data that have already been processed to the client machines improve server performance.
Better feedback: Most Application using the RIA provides users with fast and accurate feedback. Due to their ability to change a part of the application without reloading, users can get to know more about the real time confirmation of an action, information and error messages. etc.
Partial page updating: some web application pages are loaded once, when some one is updating something on the page; it will be automatically be sent to the server which makes the changes more easier and then resend the entree page. However there is no way HTTP and HTML can active this process. In traditional web based application a user is limited. However user has to wait for the entire page to reload even with the bandwidth connections, waiting times annoyed users. But RIA introduces some additional technologies, which can perform this task without any waiting time. Such technologies are the real-‐time streaming etc.
Direct interaction: According to competerworld.com “In a traditional page-‐based Web application, interaction are limited to a small group of standard controls e.g. radio buttons, checkboxes and form fields. This severely hampers the creation of usable and engaging applications. An RIA can use a wider range of controls that allow greater efficiency and enhance the user experience. In RIAs, for example, users can interact directly with page elements through editing or drag-‐and-‐drop tools. They can also do things like pan across a map or other image.”
Benefits of Rich Internet application (RIA).
Rich Internet application (RIA) offer organization a proven, cost effective way to deliver modern application with real business benefits,like:
Offer users a richer, more engaging experience.
Keep pace with users' rising expectations.
Increase customer loyalty and generate higher profits.
Leverage existing personnel, processes and infrastructure.
Rich Internet applications are basically web applications designed to acclimatize and deliver function usually associated with desktop applications. The main feature of RIAs are that they do not need a software installation and run solely on a web browser. The code behind the RIA is devised in a way to identify and adjust accordingly. One striking feature of an RIA (in comparison to other Web-based applications) is the client engine that acts as an interface between the user and the application server. This can be seen in the following Figure:
The most well-known tools used for RIAs are Adobe Flash / Flex, Adobe Air, Java Script, Struts, PHP, JQuery, AJAX, HTML 5.0 & CSS3, as the following figure demonstrates:
The Social web encompasses how websites and software are designed and developed in order to support social interaction. These online social interactions form the basis of much online activity including online shopping,education, gaming and social networking websites.
The social Web developed in three stages from the beginning of the '90s up to the present day, transforming from simple one-way communication web pages to a network of truly social applications. During the "one-way conversation" era of online applications in the mid '90s, the web was used socially at this time. In the mid '90s, some companies (like Amazon) made great progress in advancing online social interaction by storing information as well as displaying it. This led to the rise of read-write web applications, allowing for a "two-way conversation" between users and the individual or organization running the site.
The first social networking sites were introduced prior to social media sites. A social networking site is an online plate form that is usually created by an individual, describing his/her interest public. However this process enhances other people from different environment to get to know each other. Social networking site in general allows user to post their personal information, such as photographs, videos, and blog. Such sites, which are extremely popular, are usually an interactive site, which would allow users to be able to chart or share ideas to other people across the web. A social site could be described as a great way to get in touch with a large group of people. However, if a user have any information that he wants to share; he can simply post it on the dash board which is known as the profile. Furthermore networking sites like this have different rules for creating connections, but some times they often allow users to view the connections of a confirmed connection and even suggest further connections based on a person’s established network.
However some social networking websites like LinkedIn are used for professional connections, while sites like Facebook are in line between private and professional. There are many networks that are built for a specific user base, such as cultural, political groups within a given area, or even traders in financial markets. A social networking site can be seen as a public or semi-‐public profile page, dating sites, fan sites etc.
It good to know, there are differences between social networking sites and social media sites. A social networking site is seen as a public or semi public site where as social media site are those site that could be used for broadcasting and let's anyone see your content — or at least, assumes someone you are not friends with might be interested in it. The focus is on voting up the most relevant content beyond the creator's neighborhood. Social network(ing) prefers to limit interaction and control to that first degree sphere; you might have some content visible to anyone, but mostly to identify people as relevant members of your close circle. Social Media are tools for sharing and discussing information. Social Networking is the use of communities of interest to connect to others. You can use Social Media to facilitate Social Networking.
Which sites/tools fall into which category. LinkedIn? Social networking. YouTube? It's social media. And what about Twitter and Facebook? Twitter and Facebook are Web 2.0 sites with the whole package. They straddle the Social Media and Social Networking divide perfectly.
Major types of websites
Blog: The term blog comes from the word weblog. Until 2009 blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject. More recently "multi-author blogs" (MABs) have developed, with posts written by large numbers of authors and professionally edited. This type of site is usually displayed in a reverse chronological order, such as the most recent post or upload appears first. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into societal news streams.
Wiki: These websites are created to serve as a detail way of passing descriptive information to the society, e.g. WIKIPEDIA. Text is usually written using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor. While a wiki is a type of content management system, it differs from a blog or most other such systems in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little implicit structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users. Trustworthiness and Security - the two biggest attribute for wikis. Critics of publicly editable wiki systems argue that these systems could be easily tampered with, while proponents argue that the community of users can catch malicious content and correct it - Trustworthiness. While vandalism is affecting security. The amount of vandalism a wiki receives depends on how open the wiki is.
Social: Social network site is a site that enable user to create a public profile within that website and form relationship with other users of the web, however it is referred to a profile site. Social site on the Internet is describes the community based site where it brings people together to talk, share ideas, share interests, make new friends, etc. However this type of collaboration and sharing of data is often referred to as social media. Below are examples of social site; Facebook, twitter, YouTube, instagram etc.
If we would like to summarize to social side of the Web 2.0, we could found the following three concepts:
Users are creating data:
Amazon’s reviews, Del.icio.us’s bookmarks, Flickr’s photos, Yahoo, Google’s indexed web pages, Technorati’s blogs, FriendsReunited’s friends, Wikipedia’s information
Users are creating data from your data:
Programmatic access to data (Web Services, RSS, FOAF, etc.). Apps showing how useful your data is compared with your competitor’s. Adds value to your data.
Data filtering based on user behaviour
Recommendation engines, ranking algorithms, tagging.
Using Web 2.0 sites the users - and sometimes visitors - have the ability to add some changes to webpages, allowing users to do more than just retrieve information. By increasing what was already possible in "Web 1.0", they provide the user with more user-interface (RIA), software and storage facilities, all through their browser. This has been called "network as platform" computing. Major features of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, user created websites, self-publishing platforms, tagging, news feed, social bookmarking and reviewing, like in popular sites such as amazon, zappos, eBay where shoppers are allowed to leave reviews about products. The following figure shows the most well-known representation of Web 2.0:
The key features of Web 2.0 include:
Folksonomy - free classification of information; allows users to collectively classify and find information (e.g. Tagging to provide somehow meta-information. )
Rich User Experience- dynamic content; responsive to user input (RIA)
User as a Contributor- information flows two ways between site owner and site user by means of evaluation, review, and commenting.
Long tail - Business aspect. Services offered on demand basis; profit is realized through monthly service subscriptions more than one-time purchases of goods over the network. (e.g. PayPerClick)
User Participation - site users add content for others to see (e.g. Crowdsourcing, Recommendation, Videocasting)
Basic Trust - contributions are available for the world to use, reuse, or re-purpose
Dispersion - content delivery uses multiple channels (e.g. file sharing, permalinks, RSS); digital resources and services are sought more than physical goods
With the emergence of Web 2.0, content can be easily shared and its offers all users the same freedom to contribute. However, this opens the possibility for serious debate and collaboration, it also increases the incidence of "spamming" and "trolling" and links back to the previously mentioned question about Trustworthiness and Security. Naturally, this possible downside should not let influence the good side of the Web.
Web 2.0 is important because it can easily grab attention, presenting the best output, which can triggers the attention of customers when visiting a site. It is easy for customers, it has been into studied since the first development of sites, that website that use simpler technique and strategies are been considered as popular sites in the web arena. Further researches shows that it takes few mines for a probable customer to decide whether he/she needs the information. Finally the third thing, market expansion. Expanding the market can be consider as a way of passing information about a product to a bigger environment. It is referred to as a process of offering a product service to a wider section of an existing market. Website are usually serve as a way of expanding business process, it boost a business, which has a low level to a higher level.
In Web 1.0, users were just spectators; users take information that the website provide by just reading it while with Web 2.0 users became more friendly to website by interacting with it. One of the most applicable reasons to have Web 2.0 is that it provides better functionality for interaction with websites. However web 2.0 websites, which revolutionized social networking, are Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Thanks to the advanced enhancement of Web 2.0 these social networking websites which offer the users better interaction with each other whereby they can share ideas, comments, videos, links and much more. Furthermore in Social book marking and social networking are much more compatible with Web 2.0 because they have revolutionized the way the Internet is being used. However if you hire a web 2.0 service then you can let them do all the work for you. A user can use their services to get on any popular social networking website, you can write, and share information and even get to know more about any subject you want to. Web 2.0 is the greatest online development since the initial World Wide Web and it is making heavy changes in the way Internet technology is being used in today’s world.
Advantage of Web 2.0 tools
It is a social networking site that allows professional people to be connecting with professionals as well. However LinkedIn allows co-workers, customers, potential employers, previous colleagues, or potential clients to be connected with each other unlike personal social sites, where people focus on sharing photos and interests. LinkedIn users are more like keep on users where they detailed their employment and educational history. Furthermore, users of LinkedIn can recommend other LinkedIn user, which could be considered synonymous with a referee or employment reference. LinkedIn provides a way to opens avenues far beyond publishing your CV on the Internet; businesses can use LinkedIn as a way to finding potential employees with the exact talent and skills, which they require, and as a recruitment tool. However they can as well use it to generate sales leads, by finding out who are the key players within target organizations. Moreover users believe that competition is probably on LinkedIn, one could use public information about their employees to your own competitive advantages.
Features:
Members or users can post photos and view the profiles and photos of other users.
Members can view how many people have searched for and viewed them recently, although more detailed information requires a paid upgrade to a premium account.
Employers can list jobs and openings and search for potential candidates.
Nowadays, Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites. It allows a user to create a profile, upload videos and photos as well. According to the statistics made by the Nielsen group, Internet users within the United States spends more time on Facebook than other sites. This makes it to a perfect business medium, where the profit originates from advertising. While doing business, Facebook bringing together all the Web 2.0 parts.
Wikis - By definition, a wiki is a collaborative space that can be edited by anyone with access to the site. This notion of participation and cooperation creates a more productive, usable information portal for all affiliated members. Facebook has rebranded this concept as ‘Groups’.
Blogs - When a user writes a ‘Note’ on Facebook, they are expressing their thoughts or opinions in a given manner. A collection of these notes, in reverse chronological order, can be classified as a ‘weblog’ or blog. The offline concept of a diary has been around for centuries.
User-Generated Content (UGC) - Once again, the term may seem rather self-explanatory, but it does need some clarification. UGC is content created by the user - it is not production quality. Examples include photos, videos, and audio clips.
API - It is a way to integrate services for the data. This is what Facebook has done with their platform.
Micro-blogging - This new phenomenon is essentially a mini-form of blogging. Recently made popular by companies such as Twitter and Tumblr, micro-blogging is a way to provide a short message (usually less than 200 characters) about your life, mood, or current state via the web, e-mail, text, or IM. To meet demand in this area, Facebook launched ‘Status Updates’, which is simply another way of labelling micro-blogging.
Widgets - A widget is an embedded device that provides some level of value to the publisher. This is somewhat akin to what Facebook has done with their ‘F8 Platform’, and more notably ‘Applications’. Once a user adds a given ‘Application’, it appears on their profile page, where other users can see it and interact with it (or even add it themselves).
RSS - The concept of the ‘News Feed’ acting as an RSS reader. Having said that, Facebook has started to integrate actual RSS protocol within the site as well. Anyone now has the ability to subscribe (via RSS) to another user’s ‘Notes’, in many cases.
On top of all these obvious examples, Facebook also makes extensive use of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) throughout the site. This creates a more intuitive, enjoyable user experience. However, there are other features as well, like Nearby. Nearby technology tells you when your friends are nearby so you can get in touch with them easily. However Facebook will let you share your location with friends and other people that are not even related to you as well. This feature is hard to categorize because it goes beyond the simple Web 2.0 concept.
Crowdsourcing has become one of the ways in which the social Web can be used collaborative efforts, particularly in the last few years, with the dawn of the semantic web and Web 2.0. Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees. This process is often used to subdivide tedious work to use crowd-based outsourcing or to fund-raise startup companies (crowdfunding e.g. Kickstarter) and charities, but it can also apply to specific requests, such as , a broad-based competition, and a general search for answers, solutions.
Facebook has also been a mode in which crowdsourcing can occur, as users typically ask a question in their status message hoping those that see it on his or her news feed will answer the question, or users may opt to use the poll option now available to obtain information from those within their friends network.
Continuing the travel back in time, we have found that the wisdom of the crowd could be found in several points. try to think about tagging (Del.icio.us, connotea.com) or voting systems (Digg.com, Reddit.com) or search engines (Google’s PageRank). It can be summarized in one sentence: Decisions by the many better than decisions by one. However, the meaning of Crowdsourcing and derivatives are based on the first paragraph's point of view. The idea is to take work and outsource it to a crowd of workers. Famous Example: Wikipedia. Instead of Wikipedia creating an encyclopedia on their own, hiring writers and editors, they gave a crowd the ability to create the information on their own.
Pros & Cons
Crowdsourcing’s biggest benefit is the ability to receive better quality results, since several people offer their best ideas, skills, & support. Crowdsourcing allows you to select the best result from a sea of ‘best entries,’ as opposed to receiving the best entry from a single provider. Results can be delivered much quicker than traditional methods, since crowdsourcing is a form of freelancing. You can get a finished video within a month, a finished design or idea within a week, and microtasks appear within minutes.
Clear instructions are essential in crowdsourcing. You could potentially be searching through thousands of possible ideas, which can be painstaking, or even complicated, if the instructions are not clearly understood. Some forms of crowdsourcing do involve spec work, which some people are against. Quality can be difficult to judge if proper expectations are not clearly stated.